


Where You Breathe

by hitlikehammers



Category: Lost
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-08
Updated: 2009-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Storm’s coming. <b>General Spoilers; AU/Post-Island.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out far more vague and meandering than I’d intended, but there’s definitely some rain going on. Hopefully that’s enough to outweigh the Biblical metaphors and weird imagery that somehow snuck in alongside :) Hope you enjoy!

The frost on the magnolia tree looks fabricated, sparkling even without the sun; too perfect to be true.

It’s April where they are, though for all they know it could be June, could be January - they probably wouldn’t notice. In his mind it’s always spring, perpetual summer, and four years and a trek across the country still can’t shake the whisper of that endless heat, Hell on earth in the most dangerous Eden imaginable.

There’s a chill here; the cutting, piercing sort that lingers at the edges and slices with shallow, haphazard precision - a perfection only nature knows - and Jack’s hands are wrapped around the murals of his biceps, his armor against the attack. He can’t help but wonder idly how he ever made it as a surgeon; his knuckles look too thick, the curve in his ring fingers too steep.

Storm’s coming.

He doesn’t move when he hears the shuffle behind him, the rustling of pages and the folding of glasses followed by the distinct pad of cotton on carpet, the slide of a snake’s belly to Jack’s naked toes. It would make him cringe a bit, take him back there to the inescapable green and the clenched fist of the jungle closing in on him, if he couldn’t see the rain, couldn’t look out and see the greys and ochres of civilization; if he couldn’t feel it as James slides open palms around his shoulders, wide like the yawning sea as they draw him just a little closer, washing the tension from his muscles with the gentle care of silence.

Wet lips press at the point of his jaw without ceremony, without warning, skating across the roughness of lazy stubble like dimples in ice, whispering wordlessly, dancing around to his mouth without ever really kissing, just dragging along the lines, walking the tightrope of his features; tracing the sketch and creating it anew - creating it better, softer, less refined but with such _feeling_ as Jack leans in to the touch.

When they finally breathe against each other, Jack tastes salt, the savory waterfall of herbs and broth that had always spoken to him of something he should know but doesn’t - like watching a video of home but never going there yourself. And James doesn’t have to tell him anymore that his momma used to make him alphabet soup out of the can because Jack knows that story already - there are so few stories, it’s not hard to keep track. Every breath condenses as those same slippery letters on his skin, spelling out the words that James can never say because they got lost somewhere along the run, left in a kitchen sink in Alabama, where his mother used to do the dishes.

His hand comes up to grasp Jack at his chin, splayed up to brush back and forth, a metronome against his cheek, weighing out the sands of time trickling past them, trickling down. He leans in, and runs his chicken-soup tongue over the backs of Jack’s teeth before he ravishes their fronts, and his fingers smell like musk and dying ink, old and decrepit, the scent of shut-ins and mothballs overpowering the scent of _him_. The ghosts of letters linger, pressed against his thumb, and Jack can see them, some of them, out of the corner of his eye: tattoos of the inevitable, fleeting and faint, _‘the’_ and _‘for’_ and _‘to’_ in fonts that don’t suit him, too small and uniform to ever belong, to ever define the man they seek shelter upon, in whom they take refuge, a steady berth against the waves.

James holds him, anchor to hull, after they move to breathe alone for a while, arms draped loose around him so that the wrinkles in his shirt hang off his chest and all he can sense are the barest impressions of a body he knows like his own. Jack feels the raindrops like fingertips dancing along his spine, knows they’re there before the crack of the thunder breaks open the sky and sends them falling, fleeing, destined to die.

It isn’t until the rain falls quicker than his heartbeats, isn’t until he’s cool with the soft breath of soil and the gentle scent of destruction - the Ark above, atop the Deluge, and as it was written, they come two by two - that Jack can breathe easier, can trust the promise of steady arms against him, even if he doesn’t give into them yet; the world will come clean once the clouds have passed, and Jack knows that when he opens his eyes with the break of dawn, he’ll remember what it means to be home.

James’s hand at his hip cups against him, guides him away from the window, and Jack spares one last glance at the magnolias, crushed against the torrent and pale, somehow, beneath the curtain of the rain.

The frost is gone, but Jack doesn’t miss it.

Smaller now, worse for the wear - even the blossoms look renewed; reborn.


End file.
